Poll finds that a majority of Republic’s Sinn Féin voters want checkpoints on the border…

Yes, you read that correctly and it’s not April 1st.

To clarify, according to an opinion poll conducted by the Sunday Independent, half of the public and a majority of Sinn Féin voters (52%) in the Republic of Ireland want checkpoints on the border with Northern Ireland to limit the number of asylum seekers coming into Ireland from the UK.

It’s hard to believe that a majority of southern Sinn Féin voters would place the immigration issue above maintaining a soft border. Putting checkpoints on the border would undermine the immense work that has gone into making it as invisible as possible.

For most northern Sinn Féin voters, the very idea of border checks of any kind is unconscionable.

Fintan O’Toole examines the issue in the Irish Times.

The most impossible thing on this island is controlling the Border. We know this from the Troubles. We know it from Brexit.

…A hard Border is now, apparently, a patriotic cause.

Oh, how we laughed at the Brits when they were spouting this kind of nonsense!

…We learned that in 2016 there were 110 million crossings of the Border. The 15 main official crossing points alone were traversed by 43 million private vehicles, 900,000 cross-border coach passenger journeys and 868,500 cross-border train passengers.

…the Border has 208 known crossing-points – the entire eastern flank of the European Union has 137.

Fintan goes on to observe that:

The Government has allowed itself, and Ireland, to become a bit part player in a toxic Tory story.

The title of that story is The Small Boats, a phrase that used to be part of one of Britain’s favourite myths of heroic failure, the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940. It has been turned, in the mad psychodrama of Brexit, into a threat of invasion that functions as the last hope of a dying Tory regime.

Sinn Féin and the Irish Government have ruled border checks out.

The unpalatable and impossible nature of policing the land border means attention will return to a sea border, as happened during Brexit. Managing immigration at airports and ports seems much more straightforward than managing it via 208 land crossing points.

In the meantime though, how do Sinn Féin appease their southern voters?

Sinn Fein want Ireland to opt out from the majority of measures contained within the EU’s Asylum and Migration Pact and for Ireland to go it alone.

However, Sinn Féin spokesperson on Justice, Pa Daly TD, has said ‘We support opting-in to the Asylum and Migration Management Regulation because it facilitates the return of people who seek to make an asylum application here to the first country where an international protection applicant has made a claim.’

Vast majority of the EU’s Asylum and Migration Pact is not in Ireland’s interests – Pa Daly TD

"Some decisions are better taken locally and one size does not fit all."https://t.co/BnmkXyDfhK

— Sinn Féin (@sinnfeinireland) March 27, 2024

Is it possible that the British have a game-plan in all of this? Could it be to exploit the current standoff between themselves and the Irish Government to their own benefit? Do they want Ireland to persuade France to take back illegal asylum seekers (who have travelled to the UK from France) & in return they will take back asylum seekers who have travelled to Ireland via the UK?

After all, the poll also found that an overwhelming majority (82%) wanted immigrants who have come to Ireland from Britain through Northern Ireland to be deported back to the UK.

Interesting times ahead.